The Grand Connaught Rooms, 61-65 Great Queen Street, London WC2B 5DA
09:30 – 15:00, Sunday 2nd December 2012
The Cyber Security Challenge UK and the SANS Institute have invited members of the public to the SANS NetWars Face-to-Face Final, the latest face-to-face battle in the Cyber Security Challenge UK. During this morning event, 30 of the country’s most talented amateur cyber defenders will demonstrate their skills on one of the world most intense cyber training environments in the hope of winning place at next year’s Masterclass, the grand final of the Cyber Security Challenge UK.
During the day you will be able to meet candidates as well as the real life cyber professionals at SANS who have developed the competition and the organisers of the Challenge.
Background
The Cyber Security Challenge UK is a series of national competitions aiming to find talented people for increasing job opportunities in cyber security who can defend the UK, its business and citizens from viruses and hackers and an increasingly organised black market of cyber criminals. Currently in its third programme of competitions, the Challenge has seen thousands of talented guys and girls tackle its competitions, handed out over £130,000 of career enabling prizes and seen many of its leading players make the step across into their first jobs in industry.
The SANS NetWars which takes place on 2nd December is a brand new competition for the Challenge which forms one of this year’s four stream finals which lead into the overall Masterclass final in March next year. It takes the 30 most successful candidates from two rounds of a first stage virtual competition called the SANS & Sophos Infrastructure Security Challenge which was held in June and October this year.
The SANS NetWars
The SANS NetWars is built on the idea that the best way to learn is hands-on experience in real-world scenarios. NetWars is currently used around the world to train cyber professionals at some of the biggest companies in the world but this is the first time is has been used to identify brand new talent.
In two hours of gaming participants will be tasked with recovering a number of ‘flags’ from throughout the NetWars virtual environment indicating that they’ve mastered each challenge. Their scores are then displayed on a dynamic real-time scoreboard, showing their accomplishments.